Text Effects

[dani72]

It would be great to have some more text effects in Magic. Things like drop shadow or outline & gradient colours would be useful to have.

I have used some workarounds such as ghosting for drop shadow but it's not quite the same thing as the "shadow" doesn't all go in the same direction. Maybe there's other workarounds I've missed but still it would be handy just to have the options easily accessible under the text module.

[Terry Payman]

Although not the 'built-in" option that you requested, Eric had a couple of suggestions for drop-shadow that I have found useful.
https://magicmusicvisuals.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1002&p=4516&hilit=Drop+shadow#p4516

[dani72]

Although not the 'built-in" option that you requested, Eric had a couple of suggestions for drop-shadow that I have found useful.
https://magicmusicvisuals.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1002&p=4516&hilit=Drop+shadow#p4516

Thanks for that. That info is from 2016 so obviously for an older version of Magic but I'm sure it would still work now.

[Sadler]

Rather than specifically for text, this drop shadow method, and many other effects, can be applied to any element. For example "Stylise->Edges" will give you thin outline and Erode a thicker outline which can be applied over the original text. You can make glows by blurring and applying the object over the blurred version. One can use Mask to apply many textures to objects including gradients.

text_effects.png (44.89 KiB) Viewed 2760 times

Also, check out this thread for text animation effects using the iterator:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1873&p=8805

[Eric]

To be honest, text effects haven't been much of a priority because you can go a long way with doing them statically in Photoshop and then just bringing them into Magic as images.

[dani72]

Rather than specifically for text, this drop shadow method, and many other effects, can be applied to any element. For example "Stylise->Edges" will give you thin outline and Erode a thicker outline which can be applied over the original text. You can make glows by blurring and applying the object over the blurred version. One can use Mask to apply many textures to objects including gradients.

text_effects.png

Also, check out this thread for text animation effects using the iterator:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1873&p=8805

Yeah I've used some wicked text effects before with masking. See this video for instance where the text appears to be floating over the background:

[media]

Thanks for the other tips I'll have to experiment with edges and the other effects you mentioned with text. I guess I was just used to Nero Video where all the text effects are in one place. That's a very different type of video creator though.